Live Oregon

Natural fibers and warm colors follow the aesthetic of the Columbia Gorge below this Mosier home.

Natural Beauty

A house in Mosier captures everything special about the Columbia River Gorge written by Melissa Daltonphotography by Christopher Dibble Richard Brown is no stranger to working on esteemed sites. Consider the architect’s deft addition to a 1949 Pietro Belluschi house in Oak Grove—Belluschi being perhaps Oregon’s most famous modern architect and known worldwide. But when the owners of 10 acres near Mosier in the Columbia River Gorge reached out, it wasn’t an existing house that struck awe in Brown. It was the land. “My first thought was, ‘This is a rare opportunity for us to work with a really beautiful site,’” said Brown. “I felt a great responsibility to be respectful, in order to take advantage of as many aspects of it as we can.” The Columbia River Gorge is indeed dramatic: a canyon 80 miles long and 4,000 feet deep in spots, cut by the Columbia River and marking…

Chris Martini's first wood-burning hot tub on Mount Hood

DIY: Wood-Fired Hot Tubs

Photography by Northwest Timber Tubs A few years ago, Chris Martini’s friends asked for help with a project. They had bought property at the base of Mount Hood and wanted to build a hot tub there. The only catch? The tub needed to be completely off-grid and fueled by a wood-fired stove. Having extensive experience as a carpenter, and most recently managing production for a teardrop trailer company for five years, Martini thought the project sounded like a fun design challenge. “They sent me pictures of some fairly crude designs from the internet that they had found. Real simple stuff of an old tub with a copper coil set-up on the outside,” said Martini. “But the issue with that set-up is that it takes forever to heat up.” Martini got to designing and building, not only the tub, but the platform beneath it, the stove insert, and a retractable roof…

Heirloom tomatoes on the vine at Stoneboat Farm.

Heirloom Treasures

Local is always best, but when it comes to eating tomatoes, sourcing is imperative written by Julie Lee | photography by Dan Hawk Locally grown tomatoes are nature’s delicate gift that loyalists wait for each season with held breath. Tomatoes also can be confusing; are they vegetable or fruit? Botanically speaking, tomatoes are fruits, bearing seeds and grown from a flowering plant, however from a culinary point of view, tomatoes are considered vegetables and counted as such by nutritionists as well. The United States Supreme Court even had a say, naming the tomato a vegetable in 1893 for taxation purposes. There is also debate on whether the benefits of tomatoes, which include powerful cancer-fighting antioxidants, vitamin C and potassium, are best reaped when tomatoes are cooked or eaten raw. The lycopene found in tomatoes is at the center of this debate; a unique and powerful antioxidant plentiful in just a…

DIY Ping Pong table

DIY: Backyard Ping Pong Table

In 2018, we profiled an incredible backyard makeover in Salem, which had an outdoor dining table that could also be used for games of ping pong. What a great idea! It was custom-crafted from stone and concrete—not exactly easy to replicate—so here’s a DIY-version made of inexpensive construction materials and galvanized steel, which can be put together in about a weekend. KEEP IN MIND A regulation size ping pong table should be about 9 feet by 5 feet and 2½ feet high. For ease of construction, we sized our table to a standard sheet of plywood measuring 4 feet by 8 feet. This will also comfortably seat six to eight chairs, depending on their size, for dining. Wherever you place the table needs enough clearance to play the game without hazard. Consider shade as well: the metal top gets hot if the table sits in the summer sun. If you…

A roasted carrot soup with miso butter is carrot comfort food for fall.

A Carrot by Any Other Name

written by Thor Erickson | photography by Tambi Lane It was a bone dry 95 degrees as our 1975 family van rolled into downtown Ashland. I was hot and thirsty, and my three sisters had been asking for hours for dad to turn on the air conditioning. “It uses too much gas.” He hollered back from the driver’s seat as he pulled over to a bank of granite-clad drinking fountains at Lithia Park near the center of town. “Go drink some cool water.” Following his instructions, we piled out of the van and raced to the fountains. As I took my first gulp, I almost gagged at the foul smell and taste of the warm water. Over my shoulder, I heard a laugh. I turned to see a balding middle-aged man in a dress. “Never drink the Lithia water!” he exclaimed in a British accent. He was holding a carrot…

Designer Max Humphrey pulled ocean and sage colors from Manzanita and found the tile to make it work.

Three Bathrooms, One Designer

Max Humphrey shares three very different bathroom designs for inspiration written by Melissa Dalton photography by Christopher Dibble Considering everything Max Humphrey has done before starting his Portland-based interior design business—including working in television and film production in Los Angeles, and touring the United States and England as a bassist in a punk band—perhaps it should come as no surprise that he has this advice for prospective bathroom remodelers. “Bathrooms don’t need to be neutral and boring,” Humphrey said, who is also the author of the recent style guide Modern Americana. The following three projects show us how that’s done. Manzanita: A nature-inspired main suite For a top-to-bottom gut remodel of a 1978 house in Manzanita, Humphrey worked with the Portland architecture firm Beebe Skidmore to swap out the home’s dated finishes for a beach cabin aesthetic that takes inspiration from the immediate natural surroundings. “An Oregon beach is very…

Brad and Seth Klann, of Mecca Grade Estate Malt, stand in their rye field with their malthouse in the background.

The Thresher in the Rye

Once derided as worthless, rye is making a comeback in bread, bourbon and beer written by Julie Leephotography by Toby Nolan Once considered a weed amongst fields and often hailed as an underdog, rye is viewed by some as the world’s most underrated grain, though countries like Russia have long adopted it as a staple, using it in breads and other recipes. The carb-laden grain is also used to make whiskey, bourbon, and beer, and can be incorporated in vodka and gin as well. Farmer and brewer Seth Klann of Brad Klann Farms near Madras, is considered an authority in the field of rye and other grains among his peers. “Seth is one of those special generational family farmers who has upheld traditional methods and expanded to his own unique malting techniques.” said Clark McCool, general manager of production at McMenamins, Inc. Klann’s family’s farm has specialized in grain and…

Not all rye bread has sprung from a landfill, but this one has and it’s delicious.

The Seven Seas of Rye

written by Thor Ericksonphotography by Tambi Lane “I found a field of rye growing next to the Knott landfill!” my friend Hubert yelled into his cell phone with excitement. He continued talking with his thick German accent. “I am harvesting it now and will be over shortly.” A retired geophysicist and university professor, Hubert looks more like a mash up between Brian May, the guitarist of the rock band Queen, and jolly old St. Nick. Hubert, who rides his bicycle everywhere arrived at my house and quickly unpacked the harvested rye berries along with a bag of dirt. We ground the grains into a small bag of flour to be used for a sourdough starter and, due the location of where he found the rye, we packaged the dirt to be analyzed by Oregon State University. Second to wheat, rye is my grain of choice when baking bread. Often referred…

DIY Cornhole board

DIY: Cornhole Board

illustrations by Jenna Lechner The origins of the modern lawn game known as cornhole are a bit of a mystery, but a patent filed on September 25, 1883, seems to offer a clue. For it, a person named Heyliger Adams de Windt of Chicago, describes an apparatus for playing a game called Parlor-Quoits, which was an indoor bean bag toss game using inclined boards with a designated hole as a target for the bag. “My present invention has for its object to provide a new game which shall be particularly suited to indoor amusement, and which may be played with an apparatus that will be inexpensive, simple, durable, and noiseless,” wrote Adams de Windt. These days, cornhole is typically played outside in lawns and parking lots rather than a parlor, but, as in Adams de Windt’s day, it’s still a fairly simple and inexpensive apparatus to make, requiring basic tools…